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Comment by staunch | Hacker News Reader

Tim Cook has done a lot at Apple, but this ethical stand will likely be the most important thing he does in his life. It's a big fucking deal.

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Tim Cook isn't the only one who should be standing up here.

We all, as technologists, need to do our part in educating the public. This debate will not be finished even if the court case is won by Apple.

The next time terrorists use encryption to hide their communications, who do you think the DOJ will seek to blame? They will blame technologists for blocking anti-encryption bills, and then the public will take an alarmist stance and agree to whatever the DOJ asks.

There is still currently 42% of the population who believes the government should be able to compel Apple to write software, which they do not want to write, that aids the FBI [1].

That's 42% of the population who will attack the IT industry with everything they can muster.

Think of all the Trump supporters. Then imagine that as an attack on encryption. We need to get ahead of this and educate the public and our representatives.

[1] http://www.politico.com/tipsheets/morning-cybersecurity/2016...

>The next time terrorists use encryption to hide their communications,

Has there been a first time? From my understanding to date there has not been any proven evidence that has been "hidden" away by encryption by terrorists.

In this case they have most of the info, obtained from apple under court order via the iCloud storage which Apple has full access to and can provide to Law Enforcement

In Paris the Terrorists used normal non-encrypted SMS

This entire FUD about "going dark" seems to be completely in the minds of the FBI and Prosecutors likely brought about by watching too many Bad Movies and TV Shows

>From my understanding to date there has not been any proven evidence that has been "hidden" away by encryption by terrorists.

To be fair it's hard to know if there has been since we can't take a peek into the encryption

True, but until such time they have proven it is an issue and that there are not other investigative avenues to be used to capture and prosecute terrorists then they should keep their hands off my encryption

That is how free societies work, we do not give up freedom simply because there might at some point in the future be a problem...

I'm not suggesting that they should break encryption, but I'd like to point out again that it's pretty hard to prove that breaking encryption is necessary in "the fight against terrorism" until they can break the encryption and show us the content.

If they get to the content in other ways we are just going to say: "aha, see you don't need to break encryption after all"

The story is that the last piece of advice jobs gave tim was to do what he thought was right. I don't think he's trying to be a martyr or anything, but I bet he's trying to do what's right in the situation. Knowing they'll fight this sort of battle really had me considering apple products again honestly, and I gave up that train long ago.

However, I still see no mention of protecting other nationalities. E.g. I'm French, since the 2015 attacks we have a law saying companies should snitch, the iPhone could very well save my fingerprint/pw outside the secure enclave if it ever needs to unlock it. I want to believe Apple is the one company that respects my privacy. Please, Apple, say your device fits my expectations.

They already did. Last time is in this latest brief where they say there is only one version of OS for all devices in all countries. Same is true for their other services (also mentioned in brief).

I feel the same way. I don't delude myself into thinking that my individual actions have any measurable impact, but I enjoy exercising the very limited power that lies in giving money to institutions I support, and withdrawing it from those I don't. Apple's definitely on my radar again.

I think you are right.

We will never know, but if the iPhone didn't happen and we were talking about a Nokia smart phone, Blackberry, etc. would we see a private company taking the same stance Apple is?

I'm not entirely sure the 1984 ad / counterculture / 'question authority' ethos is baked into other major smartphone companies quite like it is with Apple. I don't get the feeling that we would've seen the same reaction from any of the others.

I also draw attention to Jobs' spiel about the intersection of Technology and Liberal Arts. It's baked into Apple, and I think this is in part a manifestation of that.

I guess smart taxation can be called questioning authority, but claiming moral highground for [1] will be a bit hard. There are different theories how Apple was able to struck gold with iPhone, but their success is what forcing them taking their stance. I find a bit disingenuous trying to spin this story how Apple trying to do the right thing for the people, glorifying for profit companies goes against common sense. They are doing what they deem best protects their interests, if it happens to lead to better privacy is merely a side effect, and I would argue it is thanks to all the people who were raising awareness.

1. http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/10/apple-google-microso...

I completely agree that it's not singular throughout their culture (specifically w.r.t the taxation issues you raise), but I would not be surprised if in an alternate universe where Jobs etc. didn't care about that stuff, Apple just quietly complied with the cops in this case and we as the public never heard about it.

Do you truly believe that 'Apple' or any other company couldn't spin this as holding the key to the feds doing this and thus making sure they comply with the full legal processes we expect of them, rather than letting them hack into the phones and thus circumvent the warrant process?

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